


Forsaken

by Saentorine



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Abusive Parents, Abusive Relationships, Adopted Children, Backstory, Beating, Belts, Child Abuse, Childhood, Christian Character, Christianity, Credence Barebone Needs a Hug, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, First Meetings, Gen, Hogwarts Letters, Hurt No Comfort, Ilvermorny, Ilvermorny Letters, Letters, Mother-Son Relationship, Parent-Child Relationship, Physical Abuse, Religion, Religious Content, Religious Fanaticism, Religious Guilt, Whipping, not in a flattering light mind you
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-16
Updated: 2017-01-16
Packaged: 2018-09-17 19:42:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,994
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9340274
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saentorine/pseuds/Saentorine
Summary: There’s a reason Credence bears the brunt of Mary Lou’s abuse.(In other words: If the Dursleys were so freaked out by all the letters from Hogwarts trying to reach Harry, can you even imagine how much worse it would have been for Credence living with Mary Lou?)





	

**Author's Note:**

> I wonder if Ilvermorny, given the sensitive relationship between magical and non-magical people in America, approaches letter delivery differently than Hogwarts, but it occurred to me that a reason why Mary Lou targets Credence so harshly could be because she _knows_ he’s a wizard—and this is what starts him concealing his magic and creating the Obscurus.

It started out a perfectly normal sunny day out walking in the city with his mother Mary Lou and sister Chastity, just after Credence had turned eleven years old.

Granted, Credence supposed wasn’t exactly normal for two grammar-school children to be out of school on a weekday afternoon, not while most other city children their age were tucked away in magnitudinous brick buildings poring over textbooks at hard wooden desks while young truants hid from police-- but so long as they were accompanied by their mother they had never been given trouble for it. And while it was fairly normal for a family to attend church, it was perhaps less so live in one, which on that day they approached with their arms full of groceries. It wasn’t exactly normal for a family of three to require so many groceries, either-- comprised mostly of day-old bread from local bakers and vegetables given from gardens of the faithful along with a few cheap surplus bags of potatoes, beans, and meal-- much less on a daily basis, but necessary when each night for dinner they would be joined by at least fifty orphans.

Of course, Credence supposed he wasn’t exactly normal, himself. Mary Lou spoke little about it, but he knew he wasn’t her flesh and blood. Mary Lou was an unmarried but godly woman; she took in the children of others-- and like most children adopted young, he wondered about who his parents might have been. Probably they had simply died in a building fire or from infectious disease like the parents so many other orphans in the city, but sometimes he wondered—or maybe just wished—that they had been something more special than that, and that perhaps he might be special as well. Sometimes he was even certain he _was_ special—like that time he had been in need of a sweater for coming winter and the only one in the cast-off bin had been tight under his arms and terribly scratchy, but he woke the next morning to find it soft and a full size larger, as if he had changed it merely by wishing. Or all the times Mary Lou had put cabbage in the daily stew-- he hated cabbage!-- and somehow there had been no cabbage in it by the time the stew was served. Nothing big enough to be truly noticeable, but just big enough to make him wonder.

He had never given voice to these things, though, of course. The only specialness Mary Lou was concerned with was their election by God into Heaven. He was special, she told him, _blessed_ , because he had been taken in by a Christian family to know the Lord, a privilege unknown by so many heathens on the other side of the world or even in their very city who did not know or outright rejected the knowledge of God. He had the chance that after death, he would be free from suffering in Hell and kept in the eternal loving light of the Lord. Credence hoped she was right, for although he saw clearly how many were worse off than him, their ascetic life in a drafty wooden church wearing hand-me-down clothes and eating cheaply-prepared food for the masses in a noisy, dirty city that for the most part alternately ignored and despised them and the strictness of their faith, wasn’t terribly Heavenly.

After bringing their spoils inside for Mary Lou to begin cooking, Chastity stepped out to tend her small garden of flowers. She had planted them in the spring and checked them every time they went in and out of the church, beaming with pride at the color and beauty they brought to the otherwise grey and black city. Meanwhile, Credence collected the mail from their mailbox.

“There’s one for me,” he observed with anticipation, passing her the pile with his own on top as he came back inside. He'd never gotten a letter before; it didn't occur to him to open it himself.

Mary Lou picked it up, inspecting the return address to see where it had come from-- and then dropped it as if it were a snake.

“Ilvermorny School of _Witchcraft and Wizardry_ ,” she repeated. Her eyes flashed as they met his. “Who are they? What do they have to do with you?”

Credence paled, as stricken as she was. “I—I don’t know, Ma. I just saw that it was addressed to me.”

Mary Lou kept her eyes on him, suspicious, as she gingerly picked up the envelope and lit another burner on the stove. She laid the letter on the flame where as the minutes passed it curled into black ash.

***

The next morning, Credence woke up feeling something stiff within his pillowcase, which he turned over to find an envelope stuffed inside. His heart leapt into his throat as he recognized the same crest from the letter from the day before. He didn’t know which prospect scared him more—that the old letter had somehow been resurrected from the flames or that _someone_ had been into his room in order to deliver a new one. Chastity certainly wouldn’t have put it there as a joke.

His heart thundered harder when he observed the detail of the address:  
_Credence Barebone_  
_East Wing Bedroom_  
_Second Salemer Church_  
_Manhattan, NY 10002_

It was unclear how the sender knew where he slept, much less how the post office could have delivered it so specifically—but it was clear what his mother would want him to do.

Usually Mary Lou was up before her children, scolding them for the sluggishness of waking up after sunrise, but the morning was dark and he could still hear her within. He knocked gently on the door and she answered, wrapping herself in her dressing-gown. He passed the envelope to her without a word and no sooner did she recognize at a glance the seal than her eyes returned, flaming, to his. “What contact have you had with these people?”

“I haven’t!” he squeaked, immediately wishing he would have burned it himself before she ever saw it. “I just found it in my bed and brought it to you right away.”

“In your _bed_?” She read the address again and almost dropped the letter, pinching it delicately between thumb and forefinger to minimize exposure to it, glancing around the room as if some malevolent spirits might be surrounding them even now. The Second Salemer church was of a stalwart Puritan tradition; its adherents did not wantonly call out their prayers in the face of strong emotion like the snake-handlers and icon-idolaters who called themselves Christians but _she_ felt were not far removed from witches and their spells. They kept their communication with God to reserved, scheduled conversations performed knelt at bedside or in the pews of church-- but if there were ever a time in which Mary Lou might call out for the immediate intercession of the Lord now would be it.

This time, she lit the envelope with the flame of her bedside kerosene lamp and flung it into her porcelain washing basin to smolder. 

“So witches _are_ real,” he mused. His mother’s meetings had always emphasized the threat of witchcraft and witches, but recently he had begun to figure they were only a sort of symbol, a way of viewing worldly people who might corrupt one’s relationship with God-- like how the Devil probably wasn’t an actual person so much as a way of talking about evil.

“What have I been speaking of all this time?” Mary Lou reminded him. “They’re among us. They’re out there, and they’re seeking out our children.”

She was so clearly frightened it was contagious. “What should I do?” Credence asked.

“Don’t you write them back; don’t you even open their letters. If they approach you, _do not speak to them_. And arm yourself with the protection of the Lord.”

***

The next day Credence and Chastity went out with their mother early to collect the month’s order of leaflets, a new design reflecting Mary Lou’s upcoming campaign warning the masses of the dangers of entrusting godly children to public education, where they might be exposed to students or even teachers versed in witchcraft. Credence had gone alone a few days before to place the order, but they were all needed to carry the large boxes of leaflets home.

Mary Lou carefully began to flip through one of the stacks to check for quality and uniformity. She froze almost immediately. “Credence,” she whispered. He peered over her shoulder and she showed him; between every seven leaflets was tucked another envelope, identically sealed and addressed. “This isn’t funny. It’s a sin to even _joke_ about such things.”

“I didn’t put them there!” he protested. “If someone’s playing a joke, it’s not me!”

Her eyes skirted furtively towards the printer, who had returned to his press. “Who is this _someone_? How do they know so well where to find you?”

“I don’t know! I don’t know any more about it than you!”

“They’re writing to _you_. They know where you live, where you _sleep_. They’re following you. Who have you spoken to outside the church?”

Chastity had started weeping. “What danger have you brought upon us, Credence?” she whimpered. He wished she weren’t so dramatic, but truth be told he was near to tears himself—for the strangeness of it all and his inability to convince any of them that it wasn’t his fault.

Mary Lou sat them outside the printer’s door where they patiently removed every envelope from the stack and deposited them in a public garbage can on the way back to church. She would have preferred the certainty of fire but at least they rested far from their home. 

However, they needn’t have bothered to get rid of so few. As soon as they came into the church, they were presented with a veritable blizzard of envelopes. The entire sanctuary looked as if it were snowing on the inside, white paper cascading into messy piles on the pews and all around the kitchen service area and tables. A handful littered the great Bible on the altar and several rested on the arms of the Cross.

Chastity gave a small scream and looked as if she might faint. Credence dropped his box of leaflets, which fell to mingle again with the envelopes already on the floor.

Mary Lou, however, charged into the church with righteous confidence, seizing any papers she could lay her hands on and crumpling them to litter behind her. She lit all the burners on the stove as well as the oven and began throwing whatever she could grab into the fire, even as the piles grew larger behind her.

Credence made for the stairs, wondering if the source of the envelopes might be found closer to the rafters where he could see. Chastity followed, hoping to clear the onslaught of heavy paper. The envelopes seemed to be being slipped between the shingles of the roof and he thought he could hear something—or _somethings_ \-- scratching above, but in the rain of paper he couldn’t be sure.

He felt Chastity lingering behind him, watching him carefully, but he felt bold; he seized one as it fell, his intention clear. 

“You’re going to be cursed, Credence!” Chastity cried. “You’ll bring a witch’s curse down on all of us!”

Frankly, by the number of letters pouring into the church they already seemed to be cursed. Maybe the letter would tell him what he needed to do. Maybe there was something he needed to know.

He broke the seal on the envelope and slowly opened it, waiting for something to shock him. But he was met with no flames or mist or spells to make him faint or go mad—just a simple letter on fine parchment with letterhead that matched the crest on the envelope. Around them, the snow of envelopes stopped falling.

“They think _I’m_ a wizard,” Credence explained in puzzlement as he read it, Chastity holding her breath behind him. His heart hammered against his chest-- but not entirely with fear. “They want me to go to their . . . wizard school.”

The terror of this prospect had just begun to fade into a sort of flattery, surprising and taboo, when a sinister voice rose up behind him.

“Why do they think you’re a wizard, Credence?” 

Both children jumped, whirling around to face Mary Lou. Chastity immediately started crying again, but Credence felt as if every liquid in his body had drained into the floor.

“I don’t know,” he replied-- but even as he said it, he thought of those little things-- such meaningless, _little_ things-- that happened to him with no other explanation. Little things others had barely noticed. Little things he had always been able to pretend were accidents, coincidences.

“What have you done that would call their attention to you?” Mary Lou pressed.

“I-- I haven’t,“ he stammered, “I d-don’t know,” but he could tell he wasn’t convincing anyone, including himself and least of all Mary Lou.

“I took you in as my son,” she said. “I raised you in my home. I brought you up in the church.” She was practically shaking, tears in her eyes even more frightening than her rage. 

Then suddenly—she grew calm. “Take off your belt.”

“Ma?”

“Take it off,” she repeated, with deadly emphasis.

“Ma, please--“ his voice trailed into a sob, but there was no disobeying such a command. He undid the buckle as quickly as he could with shaking hands, pulled it with a slow swish against fabric from his belt loops to place in her waiting hand.

“Hold out your hands.”

“Please!” he pleaded even as he obediently presented his trembling palms to her. She folded the belt in half and brought the length of it smacking down upon the tender flesh.

Would-be pleas turned into wordless yelps. After three sharp slaps he couldn’t stand another and flinched just as the belt came down again, missing its target with an unpleasant swish.

Mary Lou was not pleased with this “disobedience.” She seized him roughly by the neck with her free hand and landed a sharp blow with between his shoulders. It cracked like a gunshot in the sanctuary of the church, echoed by Credence’s startled cry. “Keep still,” she warned him.

He raised his shuddering hands back to where she wanted them and she continued the punishment, silent even as he continued to plead and beg, trying to convince her he wasn’t a wizard, he had no idea who “Ilvermorny” was, he didn’t want to go to their school. Each time she missed her target—regardless of whether he moved or her own aim was off-- she landed a compensatory blow or two to his back, bottom, or thighs instead. He whimpered and bleated like a wounded animal, injured and terrified. She’d punished him before, punished both him and Chastisty, but never like _this_ \-- never like she half-intended to kill him.

By the time she had finished he had sunk to his knees, head bowed and shoulders scrunched up around his neck, dropping his hands each time another lash crossed the others and smeared the blood of broken welts that had risen to the surface-- before forcing himself to left them yet again in compliance to her orders. He had ceased to plead and defend himself and could only cry.

Finally, exhausted, she stopped.

“Ma,” his voice was weak and crackly when he was finally able to bring himself to speak, a full minute after she had landed her final blow. “Please don’t—“ he couldn’t think of how to say it properly, in their family; all he could think of was so many Biblical words, “please don’t forsake me.”

“You had better pray to the Lord for the sake of your soul,” she hissed, dropping the belt beside him.

He curled over onto his legs, wrapped into a ball on the floor, mind whirling in desperation wondering how he could convince her to forgive him, to _love_ him again—if she had ever loved him.

It hurt too much to clasp his hands to pray.

***

Mary Lou spent a long afternoon collecting and destroying the sea of letters rather than preparing the usual food and leaflets for her young flock. She wouldn’t even let Chastity assist her, but sent her out to her garden lest any unseemly curiosity arise in her as well. She heard Credence eventually pick himself off the floor of the landing and retire to his bedroom, feeling little pity for him; the neighborhood orphans would go without a church supper that night due to him.

She was just sweeping out the last of the ashes from the stove when a quiet shuffling of feet behind her bid her turn around. Head bowed and eyes firmly on the floor, Credence approached her. In one hand he offered a letter written on the back of one of her leaflets and in the other his belt, already folded over in the proportions he knew she would use to strike him.

“Please, Ma,” he pleaded. “I know you said not to read it. I know you said not to speak to them. I know--“ his voice caught in his throat, “I know I should be punished for disobeying you. Just please don’t throw what I wrote away. Please send it back to them so they’ll stop.”

“You expressly disobeyed me,” she agreed, eyes cold as she snatched the paper from his hand.

“I know. I know—I’m sorry. Here,” he offered the belt again, eyes welling with tears, and she took it. “Please just mail the letter.”

He held out his hands, struggling to uncurl them and expose the yet-unhealed welts, but drew a bolstering breath and remained still as she raised the strap. He shuddered and wept as she laid new stripes over the old, but this time neither pleaded nor cringed away. 

She only laid a handful of lashes this time, punishment enough for disobedience but still brutal on top of his wounds. When she was finished, he was nearly swaying with pain and the effort of submitting to it, but he still stood. His tearful eyes were still set on his feet so she spoke to the top of his bowed head. “It is not your place to presume how your mother should respond to these evils that seek out our family.”

“I know, Ma. I’m sorry,” he whispered.

“I will be the one to decide what is done with this,” she said with finality, brandishing the letter before turning for the stairs.

***

Mary Lou’s pulse thundered in her ears as she returned to the quiet of her own bedroom. She was supremely agitated, and no doubt the deserving boy was sorer but her own arms and shoulders ached with the effort of correcting him.

Credence had always been quiet, secretive, and strange; she often struggled to parse what was simply the natural surliness of a growing boy and what might be something to worry about given his lineage. Now that she thought on it, strange, unnatural things did seem to follow him. Maybe there was no chance of saving the boy; maybe the Devil had manipulated her woman’s weakness from the beginning, her instinct to care for the young and vulnerable that had driven her to adopt and care for the witch’s whelp rather than leave him starve or drown him. Maybe she had unknowingly helped him in his plot.

She should have thrown his letter into the flames to join the others, but curiosity or the Devil himself again overtook her and she unfolded it.

Credence’s penmanship was clumsy and childish for his age due to so little time in school; she was pleased, however, that his spelling of words he had learned from the Bible and her leaflets was impeccable. The leaflet he had written on was wrinkled and in places streaked with brown she could only assume was blood from the welts on his hand aggravated by holding a pen. He had clearly put himself through some pain to construct it.

_Dear Sir or Madam of Ilvermorny School_

_I am writing to tell you that I do not accept your offer of enrollment._

_You may have seen in me some sign of wizardry. Maybe this is true, but the Bible tells us of the sin of witchcraft and I know the grace of God can save us sinners so it is in His light I choose to walk. I will not be tempted by the false light of this idolatry which is the way of the Devil._

_Please do not write to me or anyone in my family again._

_May you also come to God so that He will save you too._

_Credence Barebone_

A stab of tenderness jolted her heart. For all his quiet sullenness, but she had not realized how firmly her words had taken hold in the heart of boy. 

She thought a small prayer to herself thanking God for His clarity. While the good Lord had not seen fit to give Mary Lou a husband and children of her own, He had put her on earth as a woman to do a woman’s duty and rear up lost, motherless children in His grace—and now He saw fit to present her with the greatest challenge, to grapple with the Devil still at work in the child she had taken under her very roof. To cast him out would be to leave him vulnerable to the evil that had been born in him, that would certainly consume him if he did not continue to choose the light. Even if he could not be saved, to ignore her role in this would be to fall short in her own obligations to God.

She had been called to save him.

***

The morning after the return letter was neatly postmarked and deposited in the box at the corner of their street, no more letters awaited them. Chastity was pleased to discover this when she went out on the steps before breakfast, though she also observed with disappointment that her flowers had wilted.

“You mailed my letter?” Credence asked Mary Lou, certain this could be the only explanation.

She did not directly reply that she had, but it could not go unacknowledged. “Yesterday you made a choice that determined the very fate of your soul. You came before me and God with your sins laid bare, with the humble obedience of one who would put his soul in the care of the only One who can truly save any of us. You were honest with me about your disobedience and accepted the punishment without complaint. You looked the Devil straight in the eyes and denied him.”

It was the nicest thing she had ever said to him-- the nicest thing she _could_ say to him, her heart so much deeper in her faith than in her motherhood.

“I don’t want to be a wizard, Ma,” he reiterated. “I never wanted them to write to me. Please believe me.”

“I believe you,” she assured him. “But the fight for your soul is not over—and it will only grow more difficult. The evil inside you will try to out. But I will be beside you with the love and duty of a mother to ensure you do not stray. I will not forsake you.”

In a normal family, they might have embraced—but in theirs, they simply stood and regarded one another for a moment before Mary Lou returned to fussing with the leaflets that would be recycled for this day’s supper. Credence felt a small, sad stirring in the pit of his stomach knowing the letters had ceased for good, but so long as she had not forsaken him he assured himself he had made the right choice.

***

The day passed quickly and blessedly uneventful for the first time in nearly a week. There were no letters mingled in the leaflets or hidden in bedroom, and the church supplied supper to a healthy number of neighborhood children who went out into the city to pass on their leaflets. Before sending them up to bed after a job well done, Mary Lou summoned for her son. 

“Credence, come here,” she instructed, removing her apron and hanging it on a peg by the stairs.

“Yes, Ma?”

“Have you any sins of witchcraft or idolatry to confess today?”

Credence swallowed. He’d never tried to make those little accidents happen in the first place; they’d always just tumbled out of him beyond his own control-- but at least since his mother had beaten him he felt as if all the leaks it used to spring free of had been screwed up tight, keeping the witchcraft safe inside. “No, Ma,” he replied honestly.

“Do not lie to me, Credence,” she warned him. “The Lord already sees your sins; to attempt to conceal them is only to add to them.”

Credence’s eyes darted around him, as if suddenly aware of walls closing in upon him. “I—well, I—,” he stuttered as he desperately tried to think of something, anything, even a lie. She’d believe a lie before she’d believe he hadn’t committed what she accused him of. “I—I made the flowers Chastity planted by the steps wilt,” he offered. It was small and random enough to be believable. Maybe it _was_ actually his fault. It had been so painful to write that letter, hand throbbing as he watched his sister so simplistically happy outside the window when he’d been so hurt and afraid and angry.

Mary Lou nodded, satisfied. Then she held out her hand. Credence stifled a whimper deep in his throat.

“It’s for your own good,” Mary Lou reminded him, watching his lower lip tremble as he fumbled with his belt. “I will see the Devil driven from you yet.”

***

Gellert Grindelwald, disguised in the dark-haired form of the American Director of Magical Security he had cornered some weeks ago, lingered on the street before the humble church he recognized from his vision.

He felt some stirring of curiosity when a young figure stepped out of the doorway to approach him. It took Grindelwald a moment to realize he was in fact an adult—not what he was looking for-- infantilized by his childish haircut and the slightness of his skinny frame. He didn’t seem very well; his face had a translucent pallor to it and his dark eyes were dull. It had never ceased to strike Grindelwald with irony how some of these people who spoke so highly of the healing light of the Lord could look so subdued and dead-eyed.

“Would you like to attend our meeting?” the young man asked, shuffling forward with his head bowed over the leaflets he held. He was clearly uncomfortable making eye contact, but someone—someone he could not contradict-- must have ordered him to invite passersby into the church.

“Oh, I don’t know, I’m headed somewhere—“ Grindelwald replied, hemming and hawing to buy himself the time to observe the proceedings without committing to anything from which he could not easily extricate himself.

As Grindelwald fidgeted, thrusting his hands into his pockets, the young man’s lowered eyes caught sight of his wand. In general Grindelwald wasn’t terribly concerned about disguising it; he got a bit of a thrill flouting the rules of the Statute.

“You’re _one_ of them—you’re a wizard.” The young man’s eyes lifted up to his, suddenly much brighter.

Grindelwald sighed inwardly, anticipating a tedious lecture with a litany of Bible verses or perhaps the growth of a mob from within the church as the young man dashed in to announce his sinister presence. He was no stranger to anti-wizard sentiment all the world around, but Americans tended to have a special flavor of religious ferocity to their hate. His fingers curled around his wand, ready to Obliviate.

He did _not_ expect him to lean in conspiratorially close, visibly shaking with the weight of his confession, and whisper: “I think I am, too.”

“Are you, now?” Grindelwald replied dryly. Barely better than magic-haters were the magical fetishists, non-magical people above the age of childhood pretending they were capable of love spells and thinking themselves potions masters because they knew a few recipes for herbal tea.

“I know about their school,” he explained. “I know about Ilvermorny.”

That got Grindelwald’s attention. “You got a letter?” The young man nodded silently. “Then why are you _here_?”

“I—I wanted to go,” he explained. His eyes flitted back towards the doors of the church. “But I _couldn’t_. I thought it—I thought she might love me better if I didn’t.”

“And how has that worked out for you?”

The young man was quiet for a moment but Grindelwald felt the wistfulness in him, the yearning for the life that might have been his. He thought fleetingly of another boy he had known who had been forced to set aside great potential for the sake of his thankless family, whom he had for a time made an ally by sharing with him glimpses of the power he might have known instead. 

“It’s not too late, you know,” Grindelwald replied, drawing close. His breath, visible in the cold air, mingled with the boy’s. “If what you say is true, your magic, your potential still lies within. And I can still take you into the wizarding world—a world far beyond just a school. I can show you a world where all that these people have taught you to hate and suppress is beloved—and gives you _power_. 

“But,” his eyes glanced meaningfully into the open doors of the church where Mary Lou was speaking, voice high with passion as she condemned the wickedness of the world to this week’s flock, “if I’m going to help you, I need you to help me, too.”


End file.
